The essay with its shortness and the options to freely express an original thought is one of the most favorite forms of writing for many famous authors around the world. Ever since the writing of the very first essay by Michel de Montaigne in the 16th century, followed by his famous British contemporary Francis Bacon and until now, the essay is a challenge on which only few masters of the written word could resist.

We need only to mention names such as Ernest Hemingway and Walt Whitman from the American auhors, Elias Canetti, George Orwell and George Bernard Shaw from the British ones and finish with the big German writers like Thomas Mann, Bertolt Brecht, Heinrich Mann, Hermann Hesse and of course Richard Wagner to point what kind of authors chose the essay as a method of expression.

Each of them has his own specific characteristics, but all of them impressed with their ability to express shortly and tightly innovative for their time ideas. Many of them write collections of essays on various topics, but all managed in one or another way to affect all others with new and unusual way of expressing their thoughts.

Of course, not always the ability to write great essays leads in a positive direction. A perfect example for such thing could be seen with Wagner. He wrote really hard anti-Semitic essays and it is probably not a coincidence that Wagner is the favorite composer of Hitler.

The essay is also used even for love messages and explanations, just like Robert Louis Stevenson did, who dedicates a love essay of his future wife Fanny van den Grit Osborne. His essays were definitely a success because several years after the publication in the magazine “Cornhill” the two were married.

Even more interesting is the relationship between the essay and the French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre. Without any doubt, he is one of the most representative figures of existentialist philosophy and prominent French essayist. A curious fact is that it is an essay read by him which ignited him for the philosophy and given the world such a person. The honor of being the inspirer of Sartre and the author of this essay is Henri Bergson.

Writing an essay is a masterful work that inspired many of the most famous personalities in science and literature. Many would be worried before taking this path because of the big names with which to compare, but even the fact it is difficult, writing an essay is the shortest way to line up with the names listed above. What could be better than that?